And Now, As Promised, Some Birds

There are two bridges spanning Mississinewa Reservoir, IN SR 13 and Red Bridge. South from Red Bridge the road esses through some dense cover, and there is usually something of interest.

And there was a red tail, settling onto a powerline, with a bit more balancing than the light breeze would require, and I noted the mouse in his beak.

There is a twenty-yard berm on either side of the road, and I have seen this wonderful hawk several times in the same area, and must guess I missed the denouement by moments, as the rodent hung limp.

On the north side of Red Bridge I had seen a snake on the road, and backed up to check its mortal status. I did a really bad job of reverse steering, watching the snake instead of the road, and when I finally stopped next to it, his skull had been smeared.

Yeah, probably.

I became quite aware of the Oneness of Life in the Arizona Desert, 1973. It got so bad I didn't want to walk the deserts for fear of stepping on anything. I've kind of gotten past that, as I swat mosquitoes and flies, but I surely hope that snake's head didn't see my tires last.

Don't know what the snake was (had been), and I haven't seen many in the last 10 - 15 years, so don't have a field guide. A websearch turned up only a Copperhead, but, compared with the ones I met in Alabama and Mississippi, this one had missed meals for a few years.

Would appreciate any "looks like a Copperhead" suggestions. You know, like a Corn Snake looks like a Coral Snake.

Except it might be a smidgen more tricky, as my snake lacked a head.

Jalapa is a village, really, an unincorporated town, across a limestone slab ford in the Mississinewa River from the Mississinewa Battlefield. Just east a high bridge crosses the river, and a Great Egret and a Great Blue Heron were in a pool upstream (south) of the bridge.

The first weekend in October, there is an annual, hugely successful reenactment of the locally famous battle from the War of 1812, when future President William Henry Harrison cleared north-central Indiana of the people living here.

I have not been to the "celebration", for no particular reason.

I was too ill to walk my dogs, and searched for a place they could make some fun for themselves, and found the outside of the show grounds.

There was a problem. There were frameworks for dwellings, and a stick fort. The "housing" was low, three feet tall at most, hogan-type stick frames. Except those were used by nomads. The people that lived here lived here, in framed houses with shingled roofs. There are two tribal leader houses (chief is a pretty repulsive word, considering how all Indian society was structured), one in Huntington County, the other in Wabash County, both from the earliest 19th Century, both brick.

So the 1812 Reenactment is a total sham, and perpetuates the myth of redskins, heathens, savages, that powered Manifest Destiny, and left all of us white folk a legacy of genocide to rival any, anywhere.

Okay, I won't be going, but will torch all that shit this winter.

There were two more egrets in the reservoir headwaters, and a heron in the water and an egret in a tree at Grant Creek, which holds water when the reservoir is at summer pool.

Lots of beautiful, beautiful birds.

I had an extended conversation via e-mail with a most dear friend regards "forcing" wildlife photographs. Specifically, the camera guy spooked an owl off a nest for an "in-flight action" shot.

I think this is turdly behavior.

In that spirit, I acknowledge the photo of the egret and the heron passing is superimposed.

I chose to use it because it expresses my amazement at how often I see the two paired.

They are like blood kin, each the same size, the same feeding requirements, and they are wholly tolerant of each other.

Life lesson?

I was at a little cemetery this evening. It's bounded on three sides by an Amish dairy operation.

On the back side is a lane to the pastures. About thirty yards from my visit, a bull (yeah, a real bull), had stopped to check us out. After about three minutes, my giant Abbe literally left the county. My little puppy Sun locked gaze with the bull, barked a few times, and the bull moved on. He stopped to call several times, but he never looked back.

He outweighed Sun 1200 lbs to 20.

Teddy Roosevelt, a truly lugubrious writer, said "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog".

My puppy will never be in a fight, but I was pretty damn proud of him.